Community Partners

Our facilities are all board-certified dental clinics that have been inspected and approved by the Alabama Board of Dental Examiners as approved dental facilities and approved training sites for students and residents of the School of Dentistry. Each clinic is fully operational, with dentist(s) on staff who are adjunct faculty with the SOD. The clinics have adequate operational equipment and sufficient space for student/resident rotations.

Weekly External Rotations

Christ Health Center, located at 5720 First Avenue South, is in Birmingham's Woodlawn neighborhood. It is a full-service dental clinic operation with reduced fees to attract low-income and Medicaid patients. The dental clinic is part of a faith-based medical clinic operation in the same location. D3 and D4 students rotate through this busy clinic weekly during the school year. During the fall semester, D3 students are limited in the services they are allowed to provide under supervision at this location, but that restriction is lifted in the spring semester.

Jefferson County Department of Health has several dental clinics in different locations around Birmingham. Only D4 students rotate through the dental clinics at JCDH. Generally, two D4 students are sent to two different JCDH locations each week to provide services under supervision. The SOD has been sending students to experience the dental clinic operations of JCDH for more than 30 years.

Fair Haven Retirement Home Oral Health Center is a new geriatric dental clinical program that incorporates an inter-professional educational component to the clinical experience for D3 and D4 students. This clinic provides the full range of services to residents of the Fair Haven Retirement Home and has plans to begin accepting patients from other area assisted living facilities. This dental program is the first university-affiliated geriatric dental program in a retirement home in Alabama and, we believe, in the Southeast.

Voluntary External Rotations for D-4 Students (SEARCH)

Quality of Life Health Complex is located in Gadsden, Alabama. There are currently eight dentists and three hygienists at this site. Their services include routine dental exams, extractions, fillings, cleanings, teeth bleaching, treatment for abscessed teeth, treatment for tooth decay, treatment for gum disease, and x-rays. Beginning in January 2013, D4 students will rotate each week through this clinic as part of our routine external rotations.

Franklin Primary Health Center broke ground on Mobile's new Martin Luther King Jr. Medical Center. It is a 40,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art medical complex that houses a wide variety of primary health specialties to the underserved and the underinsured citizens of Mobile County. This clinic enables its citizens to continue to receive top-quality, affordable health care. There are 11 operatories at the Franklin Medical Mall with four dentists and two hygienists, as well as satellite sites in the area. The satellite office in Gilbertown has five dental assistants and one hygienist.

Maude Whatley Dental Clinic in Tuscaloosa is an ultramodern, 18-exam-room primary-care facility. Services include pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, family medicine, X-ray, laboratory, pharmacy, social services, nutrition, parenting classes, and dental. There are two dentists, one dental hygienist, and three dental assistants.

Poarch Band-Creek Indians Health Department Dental Clinic, located in Atmore, Alabama, and built in 2004 along a major corridor running through Alabama, is unique in the cutting-edge preventive work and collaborations with the University of Alabama at Birmingham. This facility provides oral surgery and pediatric dental care with three dental hygienists and one dentist.

River Region Health Center was remodeled in 1991. It houses administrative offices and 22 exam room, including a medical clinic operation. Dental care is provided by 4.5 FTE dentists and 2.0 FTE hygienists, with five treatment rooms available for dental treatment.

Pine Apple Health Center, located in Pine Apple, Alabama, was opened in 1979. The dental clinic is being re-opened with a grant from the UAB Community Foundation, and one dentist will supervise D4 dental students in the operation of the clinic on a part-time basis through the SEARCH program.

United Cerebral Palsy of Greater Birmingham currently operates a one-chair dental clinic facility one day per week under the direction of dental faculty from the UAB School of Dentistry.

HEALS Dental Clinic is a school-based pediatric dental facility located in Huntsville, Alabama. It operates through the voluntary efforts of local pediatric dentists and accepts D4 student volunteers under the SEARCH program in the second semester of their senior year.